Doral

SouthFloridaCEO: Tell us a little about the story of incorporation.

Bermudez: I got involved because I was disappointed with the zoning that was going on in the area. When I put my name in to be on the community council, I found out that the procedure wasn't too democratic. It was controlled by a small group of people who weren't representative of the community of Doral. When County Commissioner Jose Cancio replaced Commissioner Miriam Alonso, he named me to the community council. Subsequent to that, I vowed that the council should consist of elected officials, not appointed, so I resigned my position to run--and I won. I had been one of the founders of a community organization called One Doral, to bring community events to the area, and we also worked on incorporation. Incorporation was one of our main issues. We felt that in order to get what we needed from Miami-Dade County, we had to be incorporated.

SouthFloridaCEO: Can you give an example?

Bermudez: We have two parks, there's a third one that we're discussing with the county that we think should be ours. Of those three parks, there's not one baseball field, one soccer field, one basketball court. This is in a community that today has 25,000 residents of primarily young families. Today, our Little League has to go to Virginia Gardens. Our kids have to go play soccer in Miami Lakes, or Kendall. Our streets are under-serviced, our lighting is not up to par.

SouthFloridaCEO: Was the issue being unincorporated?

Bermudez: The problem was this: We were paying into the county monumental amounts of money, we were one of the higher taxed areas, but we were getting back only about three cents on any dollar in services. It's changed, we now have our own budget. We will still have to pay back to the county what I consider an egregious fee of mitigation of $8 million, but it will leave us with $4 to $5 million to spend on our city.

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SouthFloridaCEO: What's in this year's budget?

Bermudez: Well, we've allotted $1 million-plus to the parks. We'll do more in six months than the county has done in six years. Incorporation brings a sense of community to an area that felt that it was a separate community from the rest of the county, and literally was. Incorporation also gives us better use of the tax dollars that we're paying, to help our own community, which was badly underserved. Since we were considered a "donor community," we were asked by the county to pay them back on a yearly basis, in perpetuity, a portion of the budget. This year it's $8 million, which is approximately 40 percent of our budget. We think it's unfair. Miami Lakes and Palmetto Bay, which pay mitigation, only pay 12 percent. It's a big issue that's going to be met politically in the next year.

SouthFloridaCEO: What are some major issues?

Bermudez: Traffic. Our population might be just 25,000 but it balloons during the workday, to four times as much. We have remaining land to the north. We have land there that's important, some of it needs to be incorporated, and we also need to work on a master plan. Annexation might be an issue, because of our fear of landfills and [land we want to stay] as green space. Education is important, we want another elementary school. We have three public schools and two public charter schools. We're online to get a public high school, because the kids now mostly go to Miami Springs. Creating a sense of community is important, and so is dealing with our infrastructure deficit--all those good things the county hasn't done for us.

SouthFloridaCEO: How do you plan on tying all this urban sprawl together?

Bermudez: It's interesting. We are unique among the new cities [in Miami-Dade]. We are not a bedroom community, we're a mix of residential and commercial and industrial all together. We've got Carnival, Pharmed, Perry Ellis, Ryder. We have to create, truly, a place where people want to work and play. We have to include the components of commercial, residential and industrial as we make a city. We need an area to congregate. We need to encourage people to walk more, but we need to work with the experts. One of the most interesting things about Doral is its changing demographic. Probably 12 years ago, it was retirees. Today it's younger families with kids. Demographically, it's gone to 65 percent Hispanic.

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